


The Cruelty of Us

by burningferns



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, But he did so this is my missing scene on soulmates being ripped apart, Coping, Crying, Death, Don't Like Don't Read, Ellie's a wholeass adult tyvm, F/M, Finding solace, Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Joel and Ellie implied, Joel shouldn't have died PERIODT, Kissing, LIKE BUCKETS, Longing, Lots of Crying, Love, Read the last tag, Regret, Sad, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Soulmates, The Last of Us - Freeform, Trauma, Unsaid words, Yearning, connection, living in the past, space, suicide ideation, the last of us part ii
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:14:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26132482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burningferns/pseuds/burningferns
Summary: Joel's been brutally killed and Ellie is left behind to deal with the magnitude of this loss. Maria knows that she and Tommy need to save the young woman, to return her from that precipice before it's too late. But will Tommy be enough?[[Or... Ellie is grieving and needs Joel. Tommy does what he can.]]
Relationships: Ellie/Joel (The Last of Us), Ellie/Tommy (The Last of Us), Maria/Tommy (The Last of Us)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 149





	The Cruelty of Us

**Author's Note:**

> Well hello there! I'm new to writing IN this fandom but not to TLOU or its fanfic in general. This is my first posted fic and it came as a buffer before the massive Joel/Ellie (of age!) that's already in the works. 
> 
> There will be a ton more notes AFTER this fic, so be sure to stick around for that but I need to put this up at the front with a bullhorn and bells: CHECK THE TAGS. If you find the idea of an *adult* Ellie and Joel having SOMEthing more shared between them, this and the majority of my future works might not be for you. Thanks for stopping by! 
> 
> But if you ARE a Joel/Ellie fan, then read on. This one is sad and morose and dark - trigger warnings in the tags – but I needed to explore the complexities of grief and loss through both emotional and physical lenses. What might it be like to lose your ONE person in a world like TLOU? To be forced to endure and survive when the entire world is taken from you... I warn you now – there is minimal light to this fic and a different method of coping explored. 
> 
> I'll hush for now. Hope to see you at the end notes! x

“You have to, Tommy. I know it’s not…” Maria sighs and pauses as she rubs the bridge of her nose uncomfortably; the woman is unsure as to what words, if any, are best for this situation. 

She clears her throat and places the palms of her hands flat to her breastbone, “Baby...my heart aches for you – it aches for her. She’s so lost already, Tommy. And she might very well stay lost without someone there to help her come home. You know that place, I know that place. But not like Joel knew it, not like _they_ knew it together. And he woul—. Please– _please._ You’re the closest thing to him she has left in this Godforsaken world. Go to her.” 

Tommy bobs his head and closes his tired, worn-out eyes. They’re bloodshot from one too many fallen tears and painfully sleep-deprived to top it all off; the mix of physical wounds and an idea of what awaits him on the other side of consciousness keeps him _on._ He doesn’t know when...or rather if...he will ever allow himself to truly rest again. 

Maria continues on despite her lover's unimaginable fatigue, knowing she’s duty-bound to see this through to whatever end lies up ahead. For Ellie and Joel yes, but also for her marriage and the safety of Tommy’s heart just as equally. 

“She hasn’t eaten, she doesn’t sleep and when she does she _screams_ for him. Fully asleep, she cries his name in this guttural whimpering that cuts me apar–” Maria stops herself for the second time in as many minutes as one of her hands cups her mouth. 

A muffled, woeful gasp comes as Maria holds on to herself, afraid to speak another word, afraid to keep feeling the depth of all this heartbreak that’s entered _their_ forever. 

Tommy rises and goes to his pleading, shaken wife. He doesn’t say anything; for only the second time in his life, he’s left muted by the visceral toll of heartbreak that’s lain before him. The man is at a loss for any sort of comforting response or nuance to fill the dead air that lingers in the space between them. Instead he wraps each of his arms around her and brings the lithe body into his. 

The moment she _feels_ him is damn near all she needs to cave and collapse in the center of their living room; but Maria Miller doesn’t buckle, no matter the weight that presses upon her weary shoulders...or her heart. 

In place of self-implosion, the woman rises onto the balls of her feet and enfolds her husband’s neck so fiercely with each of her needful limbs, that he almost falls backwards. 

“Oh God, Tommy,” she mewls into his unkempt long hair. She kisses his weathered skin, runs her fingers into and beneath his ponytail as she angles his body to hers as if life itself depended on it. She knows the wounds on his face ache, knows his skull is rattled and bruised from the beating he’d taken, knows his heart is in a million shattered pieces but he’s _here._ He IS alive. He made it out of that basement–he made it out of that basement. 

He. Made. It. Out. Of. That. Basement. 

Tommy cries with his wife and at the realization that she’s grateful, in this place, despite the magnitude of his loss – of their loss; the idea of this strikes at him hard. Maria is trying to let him know that she is thankful he’s survived, that he’s breathing and standing with her, but he just...doesn’t feel all that grateful. Can’t yet. Might not never. 

Survivor's guilt.  
Joel’s brutal, crushing death.  
The broken girl who’s lost her only tether to love and family. 

It’s all too goddamn much. 

“I’ll go to her, Maria. I’ll go and give her whatever she needs, alright? I–we can’t lose Ellie, you’re right. I gotta look out for her now. Joel’d want that.”

Maria nods into the crevice below his chin and leans in closer, her clinging efforts serving as a tangible reminder that he is actually drawing breath – regardless of what he may feel. She feels his air on her skin, feels the warmth of his body filtering through their thick layers of winter clothing. Sees so clearly that there is still life to be had, no matter how fucked everything may be at current. No matter how difficult Joel’s death is and likely always will be. 

A flash of her brother-in-law comes to mind then, his lifeless body laid flat on his beaten and traumatized back. Laid there exposed and shattered for all to bear witness to. He was cold, so cold already – she needed to touch him, they all did – as he rested there, just unfeeling and gone and dead and brutalized. Taken from them – _stolen_ from them. His skull so sickeningly distorted and changed he had barely looked like himself in the end. 

A strong, good man viciously murdered to an extent that even this world found cruel and unusual. 

Agony spreads through her bones again like a cancer and she holds tighter to the solo-surviving Miller in her embrace because of it. She forces herself to return to that place only a blink or two earlier and concentrates on his full lungs, his beating heart, his colorful eyes and the tears that fall down and down and down. 

But there’s Ellie that needs saving. There’s a life they _can_ look out for - another beating heart with achingly beautiful eyes that needs rescuing. 

Maria contemplates the lengths Joel would go for Ellie and knows that even this conversation is taking far too much precious time. That the saving they’re talking of here should have been well and truly underway. 

It snaps her out of the selfish, macabre reverie and into the here and now. 

She gives her other half one more gentle kiss and, “Thank you. And take her some food, too, yeah? Get her to eat, get her to talk, get her to do anything. ‘Cause you’re right, Tommy, we can’t lose her. We can’t. Ellie was Joel’s – she’s ours now.” 

Tommy tilts away as the pads of his fingers ease down the sides of his woman’s soft sweater, “I’ll stay there s’long as she needs. An’ if _you_ need me, you know where I’ll be, okay?” 

They nod in unison as a whole world of unspoken bubbles in the wake of this gaping chasm from his heart to hers – both know that whatever will be, will be, but for now, this is enough. They are enough. He will do this for love – but he’ll also do it because he _needs_ to, for Joel. 

“I’ll see you soon, Em.” Tommy kisses her forehead, turns quick on those cowboy heels he’s always favored and makes for the kitchen. He’ll forget to grab the prepared food she’s left on the counter and he rushes to leave through the backdoor without another word. He won’t look back. 

Miller men don’t look back. 

––

Ellie’s not sure how she came to be on Joel’s back porch at this time of night but nevertheless, here she is. She stands there, frozen and alone and not at all present in the way someone who’s wide awake should be. 

In all truthfulness, she’s not fully convinced Jesse ever came to her garage after that night of the townhall dance where Dina kissed her and Seth was a fucking asshole. That last night when she embarrassed and cut Joel to his very core — that last night she spoke to Joel of possible forgiveness. That last night when Joel was still there-still here to speak _with_ her. 

_’God above, what I wouldn’t trade to hear your voice just one more time.’_

That night he had spoken with that beautiful gruff tone of his, talking with firm resolve in what he’d done - and would do again - to protect and keep her. Alive or for himself, she’s not sure but she hopes both were cause enough for him to do all he had. And to willingly admit that he’d do it again despite knowing what it would cost in the end.

She wonders if he’d hold to that steely promise now if he was given the choice; if Joel had known that saving her life would call on his to be taken so torturously, would he have still voluntarily gone down that same road? 

_Yes. He would have. No matter what._

Regardless, the thought that _that_ line of potential regret might have filtered in and out of his last moments in the midst of all of that cruelty and hurt elicits an unstoppable cry from Ellie. She needs to go back to the before, to return, to wind the hands of his long-broken watch to another time.

In place of every impossibility, Ellie rubs her thumbs atop the wooden railing where Joel had stood only a few nights ago – right there, right here, just...next to her. A howl slips through clenched teeth: she’s still completely alone in _this fucked up hell._ He’s not beside her, the air isn’t being filled with that soft and malleable voice. She’s not gone back anywhere. 

Two battered hands shake as she tries to grip the splintered wood tighter than ever, fingertips busied as they pick and dig and burrow until the pain of that finally signals in her brain that _this hurts. You’re hurting yourself._

Her eyes brim with tears as her throat chokes on a thousand words and truths she never had the chance to say. Well, never said. She had plenty of chances and blew every single one of them. He gave her everything. Gave her all the time in the world and they ran out of it. She waited too long. 

And now she’s here, left behind. Separated from him for the remainder of her days. 

Her soul aches for one more night one more day one more conversation one more movie date one more smile one more laugh one more hug one more _onemore._

“Joel?” Ellie whispers into the night air, half expecting a gravelly, tired reply. But no such response calls to her. The space around her is dead like the winter always is, dead like he is now. 

A sob pushes from her chilled lips as hot tears snake their scales south over the girl’s raw, exposed flesh. She doesn’t wipe at them when they start and she won’t bother to, not when it’s all she has to show for this endless internal bleeding she’s living with.

Her head sinks to the railing between bleach-white knuckles and she shouts out to him so hard she loses her voice by the end, “Joel, Joel! Joel...JoelJoel. Where are you where **are** you I’m here I’m right here I wanna talk to you I need to talk to you… Please Joel…” 

The girl goes on and on until she has no more sound to expel; her knees buckle by the burden of this loss, of _her_ loss. She doesn’t settle onto the deck so much as end up where she lands, her body languished, small and cut so far down to size that a seed of forbidden hope begins to bloom: perhaps darkness will claim her and every hoarse cry to the universe, to her missing and only person, will have been worth it. 

Ellie doesn’t want to live with this heaviness, doesn’t believe she’s even capable of withstanding this pressure for a second longer let alone an entire lifespan. 

Her lament rages on, “ _Joel,_ I’m so sorry. I-I can’t be without you… Can you hear me? Ca-can you come find me? I’m scared...” 

She whispers that last part because she knows the disappointment he’d have if he knew her thoughts were so close to the razors edge. _‘But he doesn’t know anything anymore because he’s fucking dead, you pisspoor idiot.”_

The girl smacks at her temples one-two, five-six times; she’s discovered that self harm and physical abuse enables her to experience something other than the crushing emptiness of that basement and his cries and witnessing his skull being shatte— 

“Ellie?”

The auburn-haired woman’s eyes raise and for a minute she thinks she’s imagined That Voice. 

_“Joel?!”_ she wails, her sock-covered feet springing her to stand faster than her equilibrium could manage. She wobbles for a moment and clutches at the sore patches of struck scalp and bone from a few seconds ago, eyes adjusting to the dark as best they’re able. 

She glimpses his lumbering form coming towards hers in the dimness and Ellie feels like maybe she’s really died. Maybe she’s a ghost and they’re together again in that next place. There’s elation and relief as she’s thrust into happiness once again as her world is suddenly made whole. Even if that next place is still _this_ same place. 

Maybe Jackson was always their heaven. 

Ellie decides right then and there that she’s more than glad with it if that turns out to be the case. She has him back. That’s all she needs for her version of heaven. 

But...there he is and she realizes she’s not moved a muscle yet in response. 

In a sudden burst of energy, the girl races from the small porch and runs through the snowdrifts, right towards that beautiful silhouette – his beautiful silhouette; she doesn’t feel the cold as it bites at her, doesn’t care. She’s already dead, what does a little snow and the lack of proper clothing matter now? 

“Joel!?” she hollers again, this time with words both light and full of hope.

Finally, she reaches her shadowed soulmate; Ellie jumps and wraps her arms and legs around his perfectly solid, alive body and clings. Her hair whips forward to engulf his entire head in a rush of muted red as her nose nuzzles the side of his perfectly unbeaten skull and she kisses him there. Over and over again she just...kisses him. Needs to feel that it’s alright again. That it’s not caved in – that it’s not crushed – that it’s all so gorgeously _him_ again. 

Ellie holds on and holds on and holds on, his name a prayer, a cry, a whimper from behind long-forgotten frigid lips. 

“You’re here, Joel, _ohGodJoel._ You came back for me. I knew you’d never leave me. I knew it. I knew it was a dream or maybe I am fucking dead too either way I knew it and you’re here again please don’t ever leave me please please _please_ …”

The girl feels those strong arms tighten around her waist as his forehead digs into the crease of her neck, the press of his beard scratchy and perfect against Ellie’s icy skin; it’s all she’s longed for since that day, to feel that there’s a home in this world again for someone like her. 

“Ellie. Ellie, it...it’s—I’m not,” the man mumbles into her hair, his hands keeping her firmly attached for fear of her hightailing it into the night and God only knows what’d become of the girl if that happens. 

No, he knows exactly what would happen. And so the man grips onto the small body just as she’s taken to doing with his. Offering her a respite she so desperately needs. 

But there’s a shift — he knew it’d happen but thought he could at least give the girl more time before their harsh reality rushed on in — and Ellie snaps back to look at the person she’s…mistaken as hers. 

“Oh no, oh no no _nonono_ ,” she grieves, those pretty greens now submerged by waves of stinging tears that spill so fast she can’t yet comprehend that he’s been taken all over again from her. 

“I’m sorry, Ellie. I’m so sorry, girl,” Tommy softly utters, easing the petite shaking body back into an embrace as he feathers light pats and gentle kisses to her hair. 

“No, noooo, I don’t—I thought, _Tommy…_ ” the broken woman sobs on and on and goes lame against him, her physical self too wracked to hold itself together. The legs that were once interlocked around the small of his back hang loosely now, her arms falling from their spot atop his shoulders to go limp by his sides. All the strength she thought reclaimed abandons her as the nightmare returns in stabs and shots of full-bodied agony. 

Anger has yet to boil inside of her veins and so there is only loss and sadness and this unbearable grief. 

“I know, I know, s’alright. Let’s get you inside. You’re a step away from freezin’ to death, Ellie.” 

Still lagged but held in his embrace, Ellie turns her cheek and rests it onto Tommy’s shoulder, “Just drop me at his porch and go. It’s okay, I promise.” 

Tommy’s chin quivers as his light eyes force the harsh truth away – he knows how close this beautiful being is to the point of no return. “Nuh-uh, not a chance. C’mon.” 

A flash of _something_ other than heartache douses her then; she wants to die, she wants to be with Joel, she wants to make a big fucking decision for her own fucking life for once. Despite her harrowing sorrow, Ellie starts to find solace in the indignity of another choice being stolen and rage comes to visit her. Finally. 

It’s so hot and so vast she doesn’t quite understand what to do at first. So, Ellie just leans into it and fights her damndest. She battles against _his_ choice for _her_ life, her bare arms swinging around to punch and push at Tommy _Joel’s_ solid torso to let her drop, let her go, let her be. Ellie doesn’t want this, doesn’t belong on this side of the veil anymore. Is out of time and alone and disconnected and _so mad_ that _this_ man thinks he has any right to keep her earthside. 

“Fuck you, Tommy, let me down, get off me! Get OFF of me, let me go–please just let me go, I don’t—this isn’t how it’s supposed to be- _eee…”_ Her voice trails off, words hoarse but lost to the fiery surge of force that brought violence against him. 

He doesn’t let her go. 

Instead he walks them onward, straight to her garage’s front door; she’s straddled in his arms but entirely deflated again. He ignores her dead weight for a moment and instead notices the outside light is off and realizes the inside one is as well; it makes him sadder than he thought imaginable that he’s likened a porch light to Ellie’s own but, well, trying times. 

A telling silence stretches on between them; Tommy’s always been the talkative one compared to his older brother but words amount to less in this new normal and he doesn’t know quite what to say to her. Decides whatever needs saying he’d rather show her instead, in any way that she needs, offering _anything_ she needs. 

He carries her through the doorway and feels a rush of heat as it greets them; he takes small comfort in that she’s at least done enough to keep her surroundings tended to in the days that passed since Joel…

The full-size bed is to the left of the entrance, as is a dresser mostly full of worn clothes she’s in desperate need of now more than ever. The girl feels as cold as Joel did when Tommy felt his brother’s pallid, blue skin at the clinic earlier this morning. He needed to touch his brother, to hold him just a little while before he won’t ever be able to again. 

The man swallows the baseball-sized lump in his throat and forces the recent memory far, far away. This is not the time. Well, it is, but not really. 

He sets her down onto the edge of the mattress and kneels before her. She’s wearing panties, a sports bra and socks. That’s it. In a Wyoming Winter with damn near two feet of snow blanketing the ground. 

“I gotta get—Ellie you were in real danger there, girl. What were you thinkin’?” Tommy grumbles as he removes her icy socks. He tosses them into a corner carelessly and stands in search of a blanket or a quilt or something. _Anything._ He cranks a nearby space heater to its highest setting and is in front of her once more, a sheepskin throw draped and wrapped around her shivering frame. 

“What was I thinking about...what?” 

Tommy tilts his gaze to see her, really taking in the sight of this girl: her green eyes appear black from the ambient light of an oil lamp on the bedside table. She’s mostly wrapped in shadows and the handcrafted blanket now, but he _sees_ her amidst all the gory and scattered bits. And it’s...oh, it’d kill his brother, of that Tommy knows for damn sure. 

He thinks of her words and finds them to be hollow, expressionlessly empty and disjointed. 

Tommy doesn’t know that that’s how she was at the start of this escape plan, prior to and on Joel’s porch. Ellie doesn’t really even recall that that’s how she was at the start of all this either but even if she did, she wouldn’t’ve thought much of it. 

“You outside in your skivvies. It’s… you gotta take better care’o yourself. You know better.”

Tommy’s stomach roils at the biting tone and stern delivery — he sounds too much like Joel and isn’t sure if he’s impressed or unsettled by the thought. 

“So?” Ellie piques, but her ashen emeralds hold Tommy there as they go firm with deathly resolution. It’s as if she’s seeking something specific all of the sudden, eyes so primed and set ablaze. 

“So what, Tommy? Why do I have to take care of myself? How do you know I _know_ better?” 

Tommy’s lips smack – she’s angling for another scrap with him – just one of the mind this time and not the physical sort. The girl’s exhausted and frozen but if she’s mad again, at least that’s more emotion and of the kind he’s capable of handling. 

“You know damn well why, girl. What if...what if somethin’ happened to you? What if I didn’t get here in time to drag your frozen hide back into ‘ere? You’d’a… _Fuck,_ Ellie,” Tommy laments. He rises in front of her and begins to pace around the small living space, fingers running through straggly bits of his fraying hair. He peers around as he does this, noting the posters, her childish trinkets, the hand-built kitchen _and_ bathroom all set around just-so; it speaks to a full life and a bright personality that’s been wasted in the span of a couple days. 

“I don’t CARE, Tommy,” Ellie barks, and he can hear the words are swollen to the limit with hate and resentment. Not towards him, not truly, but he’s the outlet because in this stage of all that’s happened, she feels tricked, cheated or robbed and who could blame her? 

“Well, you oughta. Joel’d be mighty disappointed if he heard you sayin’ you don’t care nothin’ about your own life. You know it, an’ I know it, Ellie.” 

The girl sits up lightning fast, and discards the blanket onto the bed; she charges towards him, arms waving wildly, “Joel ain’t fucking here anymore, Tommy, he can’t be mad about shit. Goddammit! So why should I care? He ain’t fuc-he ain’t fucking here and I don’t wanna be either.” 

Sobs emerge from the deepest wells of her soul, throat splitting apart and all of her features gnarled from pain and...regret. She scratches and slaps both palms at her naked belly then, needing the pain like she needs Joel. Tommy winces as the sounds of her assault fill the stale air of the garage. “He’s not here...he–he…’s not _here,”_ she repeats, and Tommy covers the distance in two steps before she does any additional damage to herself. 

The man grabs her forearms and yanks them away and apart from her smacked and reddened skin, “Stop it, Ellie! Stop it right now, girl,” he howls, his light orbs intense and frightened by what’s happening here in this grave of a room. 

He looms over her, his jaw firmly set but quivering; his lips are pressed into a thin line – a tell that he’s caught between ordering her and falling apart from the dire nature of their shared reality. 

“Or what, Tommy? What’re you gonna do? Force me to stay alive by making me feel guilty for wanting to die? Joel le..ft me. You can’t help this, Tommy. No one can. Don’t you get it?” The girl lags but doesn’t crumble to his chest this time. Her skull simply dips down as her body empties of another fire that ripped through her far too fast. 

She won’t fall though: Ellie’s arms remain anchored by the man currently keeping her in a bout of silence so vast and endless, neither is sure what should come of it all. 

He breaks first, “What do you need, Ellie? What _can_ I do for ya? Tell me. Anythin’ at all.” Tommy senses an urgency and the fleeting seize of panic pass through his insides at the look of anguish she retorts with. The last Miller is not entirely sure as to how the rest of this evening will go but all he knows is that this is where he’s meant to be. No one else on earth is more important than this person, here within these four walls. 

“Just let me go, Tommy.” 

Tommy breaks again, but not from silence. He lets slip a strangle of a sound that’s so grief-stricken and laden with loss, even Ellie’s eyes catch at it. She doesn’t move, doesn’t pull her arms from his grasp, she just merely stares and watches as he grapples with what she’s doing to him. 

He gulps and resets himself the best way he’s able, given their hopeless predicament. “No. I ain’t lettin’ you go. You need to rest an’ to get warm. Get in bed. Now, Ellie.” 

Tommy doesn’t wait for her to move, rather he whirls the girl around, readjusts his hold on those thin limbs and marches them towards the empty bed. 

Finally he releases and her arms fall with a _smcck_ against her hips. The younger Miller slides the covers back and digs his hands into her pillows once, twice and then ushers her to do as he says. “G’on, in you go.” 

“Tommy?” 

He hears the same pleading in her voice just as he heard in his wife’s and it almost breaks him, again. “Mmm?” he asks, afraid of what his voice might betray in him, should he reply in kind. 

“If you’re making me do this, and you are, can you...stay?” 

She slips a tattooed arm around her midsection and shivers, body aching and troubled from too much–too fast these past few days.

Ellie’s fingers pinch at the taut flesh by her ribcage as an unforeseen idea somewhere in the abyss of her heart finds purchase; she’s nervous, afraid to follow this vein, afraid the cost will be too great for both of them. 

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Now lay down.” 

His fingertips run along the cooled skin at the center of her spine, Ellie’s bones jutting out to meet him like tiny sequential wall studs – holding her upright but bare for all the world to see. 

“Lay with me?” she squeaks. The utterance is hardly more than a whisper but Tommy’s heard it and every time he thinks he’s felt all he will feel when it comes to the death of his brother, something else cuts its way through. This time it was Ellie’s shame in needing what she’s asked here. Not because he’s married, not because he’s older or someone she trusts who’s watching her fall apart in real time, no. Not because of any of that. 

Shame because he’s Joel’s brother. And Joel would never want her to lay so intimately with Tommy, no matter how close they were. Joel was protective of what was his. 

Tommy nods but stays quiet – his voice and the conviction he thought he’d possessed has fled from him. So he holds there a moment, watches her slip into her sheets and settle onto her right side; she turns to the direction with the open space, the girl quiet and patient as she awaits his arrival. 

He tosses off his wool coat as he makes way around the white-washed posts at the foot of the bed and sits near them as he removes his saturated work boots one at a time; the snow that’s melted to fine droplets from the walk here has been all but forgotten. His socks are next to go – he doesn’t want to dampen her bed – and it’s at this point he finds his jeans are pitifully soaked at their ends. Because of course they are. 

“Mind if I?” Tommy points a finger to the base of his pant legs, “Don’t wanna wet the bed, ya know.” It’s a pathetic joke but one of Ellie’s lips actually ticks slightly upwards as she agrees to him losing the lower half of his clothing. 

He stands and removes his aged, beaten Levi’s and lays them out straight onto the floor in the hopes that they’ll dry a little quicker that way. He reaches for the handcrafted sheepskin throw that Ellie tossed off her shoulders in a fit of fury and lays it atop the other comforter to add to her warmth; she needs it more than him and her base blanket will be plenty for him. 

Tommy levers his side of the linens and lays himself down gently beside her; he’s gone intentionally supine because he’s not fully sure what to do in this new and unfamiliar territory with her. With Joel’s Ellie. 

But he knows he can’t stay staring at her wood-beam ceiling the entire night and so he angles his gaze to the left and looks at her. She’s like a sad thing, legs curled in to her torso with bags cutting so deep beneath her eyes he’s not sure if they’ll ever go away, despite her youthfulness. 

They spend a few minutes just looking at one another, paying attention to the subtleties and intricacies of the person beside them. 

But as Ellie looks across, she tries to gauge the whirlwind of time and space and how it’s colluded to bring them exactly to this point. She chases the unsuspecting muse as though it were a lifeline and it floods her in...a way she didn’t expect. “Do you believe in a parallel universe?” 

Tommy’s eyebrows raise at that and he exhales as he presses a palm to his chest, “Ya know, I don’t truly know if I do know what the hell that even is. Enlighten me.” 

Ellie entwines her hands together and stuffs them beneath the pillow before taking a deep breath and, “A parallel universe is a hypothetical universe that co-exists with the one we are currently a part of. Some say that these parallel universes still have all of the same people, places, things, events, and so on. But sometimes things happen differently there. One contrasted decision could mean a lifetime apart from the one we experience here. A ‘slideways’ sort of existence where there’s still a you and me and...uh, yeah, and us but we aren’t in here. We’re doing something else or it’s a different day altogether and so on and so on.” 

Ellie stops as her train of thought circles the drain; she knows what she really wants to say but doesn’t feel as if she’s able to speak it aloud. 

Luckily, Tommy spares her. 

“So in that other universe, there could be a you and a me and a Joel an’ we never went into that godforsaken basement, yeah? S’that what you’re sayin’?” 

Ellie’s sight goes dark as she shuts away the real world; a small hand frees itself to clutch the pillow and wipe at her heavy tears as she cries softly into the fabric. These murmurings from her are so new to Tommy, he thinks then akin to a dying thing that’s fought too hard for too long. 

She nods but doesn’t reveal her eyes, “I-I hope he’s still alive there, Tommy. _Oh God_ I hope that _that_ Joel is playing his guitar or making me dinner or bitching about my patrols being too dangerous or _or_...holding onto me forever. I ca-can’t believe in any universe if he’s not a part of it. Where we aren’t in it together. All my roads lead to him, they’re all to him, Tommy, I can’t I just can’t I...oh my _God Tommy I can’t fucking breathe without him I’m drowning it’s like I don’t know how to swim again and the whole planet is a giant bottomless ocean now that he’s gone oh god ohJoel–”_

Tommy reaches an arm out and pulls her flush to his side until she’s damn near on top of him, encasing her in a secure, true embrace; he needs to calm her, to ease her back into this universe and away from the fantasy of another place that may very well have all she longs for. He thinks on how sweet the lure of that darkness must be to taste every once in a while but to live there would spell a certain doom. He knows that because he’s witnessed Joel lope down that hole with Sarah. 

This younger Miller won’t allow that to happen – he’s promised his wife and he’s whispered those same promises to Joel ad nauseum. He won’t fail, he can’t. 

“Easy, Ellie. Easy. Slow breaths.” He takes a beat to even out his own before, “An’ I don’t know enough to speak on a ‘slideways’ or if a parallel somethin’ or other is real and we’re there, all’a us together still but what I do know is that it’s a mighty nice thought. An’ that’s all it is. You get me, girl?” 

He rubs her lower back as he ends, his opposite hand grasping onto her bicep to instill a sense of permanence to his diatribe. But Ellie’s not in that other-ways fantasy, she’s right here, with him. Her hand holding so tight to his t-shirt it’s like she believes it to be the cure for CBI. 

He wants to laugh at the irony of his own ramblings, but nothing, absolutely nothing, is humorous right now. 

She nods vehemently into his chest, her tears soaking into his bloodstream and he begins to ache all over again; for her loss, for his, for the collective. Tommy wishes so much his big brother could storm through that old garage door, breaking it off the damn hinges as he went, just to accuse him of being inappropriate with _his girl._

He closes his eyes as the sound of Joel’s voice booms in the hallowed halls of his memories, where the man has been remanded to live on, and will, forever. 

Tommy cries then. He doesn’t hide or try to cease the tidal wave of emotion, just lets go and gives in. He’s not quiet and neither is she as they cling to each other’s physical form – to ground themselves or lose themselves – either or. In any case, they succumb and it’s all they can do to stay present through the worst of all possible worlds.

“It’s not...fair, Tommy. We had so much to...I just don’t understand. It’s not real, it’s not. I know this is a nightmare, I know we, you and I, aren’t here. I know it, Tommy, I fucking know it and you’re gonna see and then you’re brewing me and Joel an entire case of Miller Brother’s Ale and we aren’t sharing with you, I swear to God we won’t share a single bottle. That’s all I want. It’s...Tommy, why can’t-he–be–here…” Ellie begins to hyperventilate and the garage starts to turn upside down as the edges of her vision begin to fade. 

Tommy knows he needs to reign it in for her; he can mourn and curse and drink himself half to death later but for where he is now, he needs to do better for this girl. 

He pushes her onto her spine and shifts, leveraging himself above her. They’re not touching or connected and it’s such an abrupt change that it yanks Ellie out of the jaws of her hellish sinkhole. “Look a’me, girl,” she hears him say, his face a few inches from her own. 

She looks. 

“Breathe slow and steady with me, okay? Breathe with me, Ellie.” 

His arms are rigid on either side of her shoulders as he suspends himself; she moves her own restless limbs in a familiar response, uses her shaking hands to wrap around the middle of his solid forearms and hold on tight. 

Ellie’s stares all throughout these actions; she’s searching for Joel in Tommy’s light eyes, in the shape of his face, the expanse of his shoulders, the coarseness of his beard. Anything, everything. She can’t find most of what she needs but keeps her gaze pinned nevertheless. 

“That’s it. In...out… In–now hold it–an’ out. Good, good. Keep those greens on me, girl.” He brakes, knowing he needs to say _more_ but what needs saying might break open those levees and who knows what it’ll take to build them all over again. 

He does it anyway. 

A plume of air and then, “I know you loved Joel in ways I can’t even come close to understandin’, an’ I know he loved you in those exact same ways. There was a bond that was–” he pauses to swallow and blink the water away from his eyes, “–a shared trauma, a wholeness the result of two mishaped, broken pieces findin’ their other halves in this sorry fucked up existence. I know that, girl, I do.” 

Ellie’s lips shake and come apart as her body absorbs the shock of Tommy’s words; she feels every syllable as they permeate and infuse themselves into her bones – the truth that’s always lived there, the completeness of loving and being loved by someone. It’s beautiful and tragic and she knows, she _knows_ that’s a major point of this, this hardest lesson of all. 

But it doesn’t help the hurt cut any less than it does and she requires more – she needs Joel, somehow, some way. She needs her person to know that what Tommy is saying _is_ real, that she feels it, too, even though she never said any of it. Not once, not ever. Joel had shared his love with her in so many different ways, told her how he felt over and over and over again. 

He loved quietly but fiercely, actively. She loved quietly and assumingly. It was to be her fatal mistake. 

“Tommy, I love him so much, I love him so fucking much, I–” her small frame twists into itself as her head turns away; it’s too overwhelming to see Tommy above her anymore. Too difficult to constrict herself from saying and begging and doing what she craves and needs and longs for. 

She squeezes his right forearm, her fingers there with a vice-like grip as she presses her skull against his warm skin; this isn’t enough, it’ll never be enough. 

In this position she steals herself, faded emeralds sewn shut and her mouth set into a red line of ripped, bruised flesh. Finally she whispers, “Can you...can you do something for me, Tommy?” 

“Look at me an’ ask. I told you, anythin’.” 

Voice falling flat underneath his order and with eyes still far off from him, Ellie whispers, “I can’t. This is too much to ask of you, I know it but if I don’t–” 

“Look a’me an’ ask. Not gonna tell you again,” he bites, not from exasperation but rather determination. He means what he told his wife and what he’s said all night – he will do anything for Ellie. That’s his role now, a role he will never abandon, no matter what's tasked of him.

She lets go of his limb and rolls onto her back, again, pursing her lips in contemplation; the red-haired girl calls on conviction to help her in this, calls on any angel nearby to offer the strength that’s essential for what’s to come next. 

Ellie reaches and cradles Tommy’s face with a pair of unsure, shivering hands. She feels the coarse hair of his beard as it tries to nip at the calloused pads of her fingertips – a memory of Joel and the texture of his perfect beard seats into her but she pushes it away for later. She won't get through this if she can’t separate then from now. 

Her lips fall open as her chest rises and falls and, “Say my name the way he says it–or the way he _said_ it..I–I know you’re able to. I’ve heard you do it when you’d make fun of him at the house or whatever...but I–it’s–can you? I need it...Tommy, I’ll beg if I have to and I know, I _know_ it’s not fair, it’s not, you’re not Joel and I’ll never be yours the way I am his but if I could just have thi–” 

Tommy silences the staggering woman with a finger laid perpendicular to her lips, “Shhh, it’s okay. I understand.” He watches her settle beneath him as fear bleeds from her in crashing waves of raw pain. He hasn't removed his finger yet and he’s not certain as to why but her mouth parts and he feels the air hot and uneven.

Maybe that’s why he wants to keep his digit there – to actually feel her exhaling and know he’s stilled her the way he meant to all damn night. 

“Close your eyes. Think of Joel, alright? Think of ‘im or a favorite memory you two shared together. Tell me when you’ve got it clear as day in that head a’yours.” 

The girl goes quiet, her hands spread and splayed across her taut, mawed belly. She nods, closes away everything else and begins the trek back back back. Back to before she cut him off, pushed him away and made him feel like he meant less to her. Back to before the truth, before the doubt, before the din of their whole world became too loud for her to hear over it. 

Back...to when that big handsome man cannon-balled into Jackson Lake over and over because she couldn’t seem to get enough of his colossal splashes and it had been hot as fuck that day. She laughed hysterically every time the water doused and drenched her, the waves knocking her forwards and backwards. He laughed so fully, too. Joel was beyond tired and worn out by the end of that day that when they arrived home, she knelt before him, removed his boots and helped him walk upstairs to bed. And right before she made to leave and come here – here to this independent exodus – he caught her hand, looked at her and simply said, “Today was a fine one, Ellie. Thank you.” 

“Got it,” her voice wobbles as she whispers, the memory giving her one of those perfect moments with Joel and that perfect moment only. She remembers his gorgeous side-smile, his low but gutty-laugh, his deep voice, _that voice_ – the only voice that ever shook her to her very DNA. Remembers when his impenetrable arms would tighten around her waist as she tried, and failed, to play water hide and seek – he called it Marco/Polo, which was dumb – but oh man, was it her favorite. 

Tommy watches as her pale face moves through the memory she’s honed in on; the oil lamp flickers and as the light dances across her solemn features and he knows it’s now or never. 

He takes a big chance on what’s about to happen, his chest tight in the hopes that it’ll be enough, that Joel can somehow work through him to give his Ellie what she is dying to have returned to her. 

The younger brother lowers his body to meet hers, biceps overworked and shaking from the mild exertion of hanging above her for so long. He leans his lower half off to the side of her hips but his upper body presses onto the girl’s with just enough weight for what he’s about to do. 

She gasps at his heavy presence and it all but confirms something he’s been curious about for a long time when it came to his brother and Ellie. _If_ there could have been more between these two soulmates and _if_ so, who’d been the one to want that particular brand of more first. 

He’ll save that for another day though. Now’s not the time. 

She’s there, face inches away and a smile on her battered features as she fades into the past, right where he’s meant for her to be. 

Tommy places his lips to her ear and then it...happens.

_“Ellie.”_

The name – her name – comes from his mouth just as it once did from Joel's and Ellie’s arms fly up and grab Tommy’s shirt so fiercely that the force of it knocks the man off center.

 _“OhJoelagainplease,”_ it’s a string of words that’s become just A word for her, to him, because nothing else is sufficient enough. What it feels to have heard _that_ again is transcendent; she’s left this room and the hurt and the pain for good and all that’s left is Joel and her, in that lake, in their home, her name on his breath as it should be. 

_“Ellie, baby, I’m right here,”_ Tommy speaks this directly into an ear, in a hushed tone that even to his own memory sounds like a relaxed, loving version of his brother’s voice. A rare thing that only two girls in the whole of that man’s life ever heard. In both different and similar states of affection from Joel. 

He wants to hate this entire charade though, to cringe and roil and revolt against the idea of imitating his freshly dead sibling, but it’s...not eliciting hate. Instead it’s giving comfort to this young girl that’s now mostly intertwined in his arms and cooing and crying and writhing beneath him. 

Not in _that_ way but not _not_ in that way either. 

A mess of auburn catches the lamp’s golden firelight as her cheek angles into the pillow below. Her body rises as she does this, as if she’s trying to remove the air between the two so there’s no her or him, but just _them._ Her arms loop around his neck and she holds to him, alive and full from what he’s given to her. 

He turns his mouth towards hers and whispers, “What d’ya need, baby, tell me…” It’s said mostly in his own cadence but there’s still a bleed of _Joel_ in there that causes Ellie to immediately react. 

She actually blushes with her sight still intentionally hidden from this visual reality, her hands kneading his shoulders in quiet supplication; Ellie’s mind is lost to a different time and place with another man. Tommy doesn’t want to be that other man, doesn’t _not_ want to be him either and thus finds himself at a crossroads. He’s offered her anything – but what is it that’s happening right now? 

Ellie finally breaks her silent reverie but doesn’t crack those vivid greens open yet; he knows why and he’s sympathetic to her needs, understands that whatever is taking place here in this sacred room is out of necessity and not some misplaced fantasy. 

“K-kiss me, Joel, _please?”_

Four words. 

Those four words cut and tear and rip Tommy apart because the delicate balance that this situation requires might be beyond his field of expertise.

But he told her how many times tonight – “Anythin’,” and he meant it. Tommy Miller is as resolute as his older blood had been and no circumstance would see that compromised. Especially not one so near and dear to his beating heart – literally and figuratively. 

A facade _can_ lead to dangerous flights of fancy, yet he’s understood that what needs to be done in this private cocoon of past and present will remain precisely where and as it is: Between them and Joel’s ghost. 

Tommy hangs his mouth centimeters above hers, her jaw and chin held in his hand as though it were the most precious thing he’s ever handled.

“Are you sure?” The voice is a whisper but it’s not his own in the semi-dark space they’re sharing; two people who are really three, that are ultimately one. Ellie offers another accepting nod and nips her lower lip in anticipation. Her heart has ached for days, and for years before that, and it’s not all she wants or needs but this – here with Tommy – is transportive and a grace extended that she will not refuse.

Tommy worries the lower part of his mouth, front teeth biting at the patch of beard there that’s been upturned in a bout of hesitation. He doesn’t think of Maria, doesn’t even hear her name in the echoes of his subconscious that tell him this _might_ be wrong. 

He only sees her hands as they clutch, release, clutch, release and any last minute hangups flee; _Joel_ kisses Ellie and the entire Milkyway upends itself. A breathy moan escapes from her split lips, not from pain but from a level of pleasure Tommy is unsure he’s ever experienced. Or witnessed on a woman. Until now. 

She’s connecting to the man she adores and loves and craves through someone else and while Tommy would absolutely have loathed this in the past, this is not substitution – this is otherworldly. 

So he keeps on; he gives her everything she no longer has a voice to ask for, pours himself out and into Ellie as Joel’s light seeps into her one ember at a time. His marionetted fingers roam across her small, lithe frame, mindful of the bruises she nurses from the kicks to her ribs and face. Mindful of a broken heart that protects and nurtures the deepest definition of love he’s ever brushed up against. 

Mindful that the desire that burns in her chest is for another. 

Tommy understands that what he gives will never be enough but it’ll have to be _just_ enough. For her and for Joel, he prays. 

He knows now the visceral truth – her truth – and Tommy will never abuse or take advantage of that. This girl not only loved his brother but was, in some way, _in love_ with his brother. Whether or not that was ever explored or shared in a physical sense, remains uncertain. Possibly forever unless he outright asks about it. 

So he gives her a doorway to that other heart, to the one that kept hers and protected hers and loved hers so fully and wholly that no other could have kept them apart. Not even they were good at being distant; Ellie “was done” with Joel and yet...she still lived twenty feet from his house. They couldn’t be in this world apart, not really. Not ever. 

Not until now, anyway. 

_”Joel,”_ she coos, as Tommy’s lips press to the heated skin of her throat, “...did you know? _Did you know?”_ She repeats this a few times until a sob strangles the rest of her regret. She cries endlessly with her fingers and nails and palms as they touch feel squeeze and pull at the man in her mind. 

She’s been set adrift by sensations she never thought she’d experience with Joel now gone and her heart irreparably torn asunder. A squeak stabs through their quiet as she sucks in a lungful of air, body vibrating and needy. She craves and craves and craves and pushes for more. 

One murderous vile person took everything from her but the man in her arms is real and offering himself up in lieu of another. She can’t think of that–can’t think of _her_ so she doesn’t. She returns to Joel and the lake and his swimsuit that was too small in all the right places and his laugh that was too loud in all the right ways. 

Ellie’s hands slip beneath a long-sleeved shirt to feel broad shoulders, strong arms, a finely shaped hairy chest before they’re out again to paw at that gorgeously dark salt and pepper beard… Ellie’s touch shies away from Tommy’s hair – he knows why – but it isn’t long before those skillful fingers embed themselves into his biceps as she yearns and hushedly begs for more. He’ll have bruises tomorrow. 

He doesn’t care. 

It isn’t long before she kisses at him, this time more passionately than the last. He moans without preamble or concern; those lips of hers are hot and wet and swollen and hurt and cut and quivering out for Tommy...’s brother – crying out to him, for him. He tastes the iron on her as he licks and returns her fervor, his body still half on, half off for the time being. 

They separate an inch or so for her to, “Joel...Joel, please?” 

After this, she cradles Tommy’s face and her vivid greens finally crack open; the long journey to a remote and private land is gone like the other half of all that she is. 

The woman says nothing at first, simply beholds his light eyes and the sandy gray shade of his beard. Takes in the different nose that lacks a prominent scar at its bridge. Sees all of these parts that make Tommy, Tommy; sees the lacerations from where he was attacked with the butt of a handgun the day Joel was murdered in front of her. 

Ellie swallows as she takes _this_ man in, the one in her arms that’s still here. She can’t help as the cold from before starts to creep into her brittle marrow – as the insurmountable loss comes surging to the forefront; she shakes and her arms drop from around him. Lagged again.

“Oh, Tommy, I’m so sorry. I never should have–we shouldn’t have...Maria… _Joel…”_

Tommy repeats his earlier actions and touches a finger to her mouth, “Shhh. This is for us. This is for you. Though I reckon that maybe we should try an’ get some sleep, yeah?” 

Ellie nods through fresh tears and moves with Tommy as he lays supine and molds her smallness to his side and front. Her ear is over his beating heart and presses there with intention while her hand is underneath his shirt like earlier; she searches his skin, his chest hair, his shape – searches him for all _his_ warmth. 

“Is this okay for us, Tommy?” 

The younger Miller closes his eyes and bobs his head because yes, it is always going to be okay. He kisses the top of her messy auburn hair and knows the morning will gut them harder than tonight ever could. The mornings that follow a shattering loss are ones you never get used to. Never want to get used to. 

“Sleep, girl. An’ hey, where’er or whene’er that parallel universe is, you’re there with Joel. Wrapped in his arms an’ safe. Loved. I know it, girl. I feel it.”

**Author's Note:**

> And...there is it. 
> 
> I'm not into Tommy/Ellie as a ship but the idea of him being the last living and closest man to Joel kept poking at me over and over, thus, this was written. 
> 
> I will say, I'm not a fan whatsoever of what was given to us story-wise with TLOUII. It was a nightmare-porn revenge tale that went wayyy too far in too many wrong directions. Gratuitous death for the sake of propelling forced empathy to achieve emotional depth with characters we didn't know and couldn't ever care for is...not good storytelling. I won't soapbox more than that but yeah – Ian Malcolm *well, there it is* gesture.
> 
> That said, I AM a massive (of age) Ellie/Joel shipper and the Big Fic will be debuting shortly. So, if that's your owlcup of coffee, I hope to see you back here in a couple of weeks. 
> 
> If not, thanks for dropping in and tell your loved ones you love them. Living with regret is the worst. 
> 
> J


End file.
